Catching Up with the Clinton Crowd

Sixteen years ago, Vanity Fair marked Bill Clinton’s arrival at the White House with a lush portfolio by Annie Leibovitz. The subjects formed the new president’s inner circle, from campaign masterminds (James Carville) to policy wonks (Rahm Emanuel), to old Arkansas friends (Lottie Shackelford). As America prepares to inaugurate another remarkably young president, VF.com revisits the earlier portfolio to find out how time and fate have treated the class of 1993.

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BILL CLINTON
It’s been 16 years since Bill Clinton rode into the White House on a wave of middle-class frustration and anxiety after running a fast-paced, quick-witted campaign that set a new standard for media savvy. We’re still talking about him, almost as if he’d never left the premises, for a number of reasons. One is his presidential legacy, a subject of nostalgia after eight years of far more radical, unpopular leadership, but also a source of disappointment for supporters who wish the gifted politician had achieved larger progressive gains. Another is his post-presidential ubiquity: excepting a brief memoir-writing spell, Clinton has been a highly public figure, death-defying in his level of activity even after his quadruple-bypass heart surgery in 2004. He has worked tirelessly to turn his philanthropic organization, the William J. Clinton Foundation, into a force for good around the world, though he has faced criticism for controversial donors such as paramilitary contractor Blackwater Worldwide, mining tycoon Frank Giustra, and the governments of Kuwait, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia. And then there’s Hillary. This is not the place to recap the dynamics of the most dissected marriage in politics, or Bill’s complicated role in his wife’s presidential bid. Suffice it to say that, if Hillary is confirmed as Barack Obama’s secretary of state, Bill will retain his title as the most influential president emeritus for some time to come.

VERNON and ANN JORDAN
Back in 1992, when Vernon Jordan was named to head President-elect Bill Clinton’s transition team, he was already being referred to as a “consummate Washington insider” and “consummate establishment figure,” and had a distinguished record of civil-rights leadership and advocacy on behalf of African Americans. Today, he and his wife, Ann, are the capital’s consummate power couple—invited to every party and able to get just about anyone on the phone at a moment’s notice. She is the chairman of the board of the National Symphony Orchestra and sits on several other nonprofit and corporate boards. He is a senior managing director at the investment bank Lazard, served on the Iraq Study Group, and somehow managed to remain in the good graces of both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama during their bruising primary campaign. In 2007, he joined the ranks of former presidents and other esteemed Americans when the National Portrait Gallery, in Washington, added a three-quarter-length oil painting of him to its permanent collection.

CHARLIE LEDLEYCharlie Ledley, who as an 18-year-old intern ended up in charge of the Clinton campaign’s entire hotel operation during the 1992 Democratic National Convention, in New York, remembers the experience as “fun and crazy.” Now a partner at Cornwall Capital, a Manhattan-based hedge fund, he marvels at how he pulled it off—especially, he says, considering that he’s terrible at handling logistics. Once the campaign ended, Ledley returned to Amherst College, and the following summer he served briefly as a White House intern but decided that politics wasn’t for him. After graduating from Amherst (one semester late, due to his time on the campaign trail), he went on to such elite proving grounds as Harvard Business School and Bain & Company before settling into his current position. Now, after more than a decade, he is once again involved in politics, as a founding board member of a political-action committee called Democrats for Education Reform.

DAVID LEOPOULOS, CAROLYN STALEY, and JOE NEWMAN
As governor of Arkansas, Bill Clinton made a point of regularly getting together with childhood friends David Leopoulos, Carolyn Staley, and Joe Newman in a monthly “Lunch Club.” As president, Clinton brought Arkansas to the White House. Leopoulos traveled to Washington for visits several times a year. He now devotes himself full-time to the Thea Foundation, which he and his wife founded after their daughter, Thea, died in a 2001 car accident. Clinton is an active supporter of the charity, which provides scholarships to Arkansas high-school students who show promise in the arts. Staley, who sang at festivities for Clinton’s gubernatorial and presidential inaugurations, is now a minister at Little Rock’s Pulaski Heights Baptist Church. She and her daughter came up with the idea for the 1997 VH1 feature Bill Clinton: Rock & Roll President. Newman continues to work as an accountant in Arkansas, and he still meets with Clinton, Leopoulos, and Staley, now at Clinton’s presidential library. According to Leopoulos, the location has changed but the activities have not: “We meet to play hearts, tell jokes, and celebrate life.”

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS; MARY STEENBURGEN; ELAINE KAMARCK; STEVEN COHEN
Clinton’s senior adviser and first White House communications director, George Stephanopoulos resigned shortly after the president’s re-election, citing stress and depression. He has since become one of the most influential figures in the political-media world as ABC News’s chief Washington correspondent and host of This Week. Actress Mary Steenburgen, an Arkansas native who campaigned for Bill Clinton as early as his 1978 run for governor, has stayed close with both Clintons. She campaigned for Hillary’s presidential bid, while also acting in films such as Four Christmases and The Brave One. New Democrat pioneer Elaine Kamarck served Clinton during his presidency, creating the National Performance Review (later called the National Partnership for Reinventing Government), through which she and Al Gore successfully streamlined the federal government, a singular accomplishment among modern presidencies. Since 1997 she has been a lecturer at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, with a detour as an adviser to Gore’s presidential campaign. Steven “Scoop” Cohen stayed in Clinton’s press office, where he served as an aide to Stephanopoulos and Dee Dee Myers and stood out for his youth (he was in his early 20s) until he became deputy communications director for the First Lady, in 1995. He later took his political expertise to Hollywood, co-creating the WB mini-series Jack & Bobby and then joining Commander in Chief, ABC’s short-lived but forward-looking series about America’s first female president, as a writer and consulting producer.

BRUCE LINDSEY; DEE DEE MYERS; PATTI SOLIS DOYLE; JUDY COLLINSBruce Lindsey, one of Bill Clinton’s closest friends, served as deputy counsel to the president until the end of his second term, helping to direct White House responses to Clinton’s political hiccups. Today, he is the C.E.O. of the William J. Clinton Foundation and of counsel at a Little Rock law firm. After resigning as White House press secretary in 1994, Dee Dee Myers co-hosted CNBC’s Equal Time for two years and was a consultant on The West Wing. Today, she is a Vanity Fair contributing editor and an analyst for CBS News. Her manifesto Why Women Should Rule the World (Harper) was published last year. Having served as Hillary Clinton’s scheduler in the White House, Patti Solis Doyle signed on to assist her Senate campaign in 2000 and was executive director of the powerful HillPAC fund-raising machine. Solis Doyle went on to manage Hillary’s presidential campaign until February 2008, when, in a sign of Hillaryland’s disarray, she was axed shortly after disappointing Super Tuesday results. In June, she was tapped by Barack Obama to be his running mate’s campaign chief of staff. A frequent guest at the White House during the Clinton years, Judy Collins was the president’s unofficial First Folk Singer. She became a goodwill ambassador for UNICEF, in 1995, and continues to work as a singer and songwriter.

LOTTIE SHACKELFORD
Little Rock’s first female mayor, Lottie Shackelford served as co-director of intergovernmental affairs during Clinton’s transition to the White House and was appointed a board member of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation as well as a U.S. delegate to the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women, in Vienna. She continues to live in Little Rock and is the longest-serving vice chair of the Democratic National Committee, a post to which she was elected in 1989.

SUSAN THOMASES
As a top adviser to Hillary Clinton, Susan Thomases was a key witness in the Whitewater hearings: she was questioned about phone calls she had with the First Lady and White House officials in the hours after the suicide of deputy White House counsel Vince Foster. She no longer practices law, having retired as a result of multiple sclerosis, but she remains a close friend and confidante of Hillary’s.

JAMES CARVILLE
Since serving as an inspired strategist for Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign, a role immortalized in the documentary The War Room,James Carville has become an unmistakable face in politics. After the campaign, the Ragin’ Cajun expanded his sphere of influence, giving speeches around the country, writing books, and consulting for international leaders such as Tony Blair and Ehud Barak. In 2002 he dove into media, as a host of CNN’s Crossfire, and he is now a regular guest on CNN’s The Situation Room and a co-host, with Luke Russert, of XM Satellite Radio’s 60/20. Carville has also made cameos in films such as The People vs. Larry Flynt and Old School, and his marriage to G.O.P. strategist Mary Matalin continues to be a model of bipartisan domesticity.

THOMAS “MACK” McLARTY
Clinton’s kindergarten pal Thomas “Mack” McLarty served as White House chief of staff before being appointed the president’s special envoy for the Americas, playing a key part in advancing NAFTA. McLarty later formed a consulting firm, which merged with Kissinger Associates in 1999 only to break from it in 2008. More recently he has been chosen by the outgoing Bush administration as an adviser to the team aiding Barack Obama’s transition to the Oval Office.

RAHM EMANUEL (center), with brothers ARIEL and EZEKIEL
Earning the nickname “Rahmbo” for aggressive antics that allegedly included mailing a rotting fish to a pollster, Rahm Emanuel served as a senior adviser to President Clinton from 1993 to 1998 after managing his campaign finances in ’92. Following a lucrative interim as an investment banker, Emanuel was elected to Congress, representing Illinois’s Fifth District, in 2002. As chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, he gained even greater respect in 2006 by guiding Democrats to large gains in the House. Now, as President Obama’s chief of staff, Emanuel will be the gatekeeper and top adviser for a new commander in chief. Not to be outdone, Rahm’s older brother, Ezekiel, served on President Clinton’s Task Force on National Health Care Reform, the ill-fated initiative spearheaded by Hillary, and is currently chair of the bioethics department at the Clinical Center of the National Institutes of Health. Younger brother Ari has found success in Hollywood as the co-founder of the Endeavor Talent Agency, modeling his life on Ari Gold, Jeremy Piven’s character on the HBO hit show Entourage, or the other way around—we forget which.

HARRY THOMASON and LINDA BLOODWORTH-THOMASON
Television producers Harry Thomason and Linda Bloodworth-Thomason, whose friendship with the Clintons goes back to Bill’s first term as Arkansas governor, remained steadfastly loyal to the First Family throughout the ups and downs of the Clinton years. Already successful before Clinton’s presidency as the creative duo behind TV hits Designing Women and Evening Shade, the couple made a minor cottage industry of films promoting Bill and Hillary (The Man from Hope, Legacy, The Hunting of the President, and, for Hillary’s first Senate bid, Hillary 2000). Harry was also a major player in shaping the president’s response to the Monica Lewinsky scandal after emerging relatively unscathed from “Travelgate,” the Clintons’ first big public-relations disaster. Now, in the run-up to Barack Obama’s swearing-in ceremony, Harry is remembered for the impressive Inauguration Day spectacle he masterminded for Clinton in 1993. In 2004, Linda published a well-received first novel, Liberating Paris (William Morrow), which has been adapted for the big screen and is slated to start shooting in the fall. She has also established a foundation that has given away more than $1.5 million in college scholarships to young women in Arkansas and Missouri.

MARILYN HORNE; DIMITRIOS THEOFANIS; CRESCENT DRAGONWAGON and CONNIE FAILS; TABITHA SOREN
Since singing “Simple Gifts” at Clinton’s 1993 swearing-in, mezzo-soprano Marilyn Horne has been honored at the Kennedy Center, inducted into the American Classical Music Hall of Fame, and given the prestigious Opera News Award. Retired from performing, she currently teaches vocal classes and runs the Marilyn Horne Foundation for aspiring singers. Dimitrios Theofanis was one of Clinton’s “Faces of Hope,” the ordinary citizens Clinton met on the campaign trail in 1992 and then invited to his inaugural festivities as honored guests. Clinton kept in touch with his Faces of Hope, as a sort of human reality check. Theofanis and his son Nick rode with Clinton on his 21st Century Express train during the 1996 re-election campaign. Patron saint of Arkansas foodies, Crescent Dragonwagon catered brunch for 1,000 on Inauguration Day. Also a writer of cookbooks, children’s books, and novels, Dragonwagon closed her Dairy Hollow House inn and restaurant in Eureka Springs, Arkansas, in 1998 to open the Writers’ Colony at Dairy Hollow. She currently lives in Vermont, where she just completed her 51st book. Connie Fails, who designed the suit that Hillary wore at Bill’s first inauguration, later shut down her boutique to head the gift shop at the William J. Clinton Presidential Center, in Little Rock. Tabitha Soren, the face of MTV’s 1992 “Choose or Lose” campaign, married writer Michael Lewis (now a Vanity Fair contributing editor), in 1997. The couple have three children.

IRA MAGAZINER; STROBE TALBOTT and BROOKE SHEARER; BETSEY WRIGHT; HAROLD ICKES and daughter CHARLOTTE JANEIra Magaziner, who met Bill Clinton while they were both Rhodes scholars at Oxford, had a tumultuous time as Clinton’s senior adviser for policy development, especially in helping lead the failed Task Force on National Health Care Reform. He was attacked for his domineering approach and called “Hillary’s Rasputin,” but since then he’s become more popular, as the principal architect of the Clinton H.I.V./AIDS Initiative at the William J. Clinton Foundation. Another Oxford pal, Strobe Talbott became deputy secretary of state and helped advise President Clinton on the new countries formed by the breakup of the Soviet Union. A noted author and journalist, Talbott is currently president of the Brookings Institution. His wife, Brooke Shearer, was on Hillary’s White House staff and has since been an advocate for the advancement of women in the Third World. As deputy chair of Bill’s ’92 campaign, longtime Clinton adviser Betsey Wright successfully fought off the “bimbo eruptions” that threatened to derail the Arkansas governor. In 1999, she publicly called Hillary Clinton’s Senate bid “a stupid idea”—but only because she envisioned bigger things for the former First Lady. Harold Ickes, whose father served under F.D.R., was Clinton’s deputy chief of staff—Michael Lewis famously nicknamed him Clinton’s “Garbage Man”—until he was fired in January 1997. (Some speculate he took the fall for Clinton as the Senate was gearing up for a probe of the president’s campaign finances.) He was Hillary’s campaign manager when she won her Senate seat and a top adviser during her run for the presidential nomination. His daughter, Charlotte Jane, graduated from Yale in 2008.

GEORGE ELDRIDGE and LUCILLE ROBINSON
Bill Clinton’s appetite for hot tamales and T-bone steak made Doe’s Eat Place, on the corner of West Markham and Ringo, the default clubhouse for his campaign staff in Little Rock, Arkansas. The then governor could be found in the kitchen, stealing hot French fries from the fryer. Clinton has since switched to a heart-healthy diet, but the menu at Doe’s remains the same. Owner George Eldridge still runs the popular spot, which last year celebrated its 20th anniversary. Longtime Doe’s chef Lucille Robinson retired “five or so” years ago. She visits Doe’s every Monday to check in on her daughters, who’ve inherited the family trade.

PAMELA HARRIMAN
Democratic doyenne Pamela Harriman decked her life with expensive art and charismatic men—Bill Clinton among them. She raised millions for his 1992 campaign, and he rewarded her with a plum gig: the U.S. ambassadorship to France. Ever glamorous, she died of a stroke in 1997, at the age of 76, after a swim at the Paris Ritz. President Clinton delivered a eulogy at the Washington National Cathedral, confessing, “Today I am here in no small measure because she was there.”